


What Love Makes Of You

by Nny



Category: Leverage, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Pre-Civil War (Marvel), Team as Family, little bit of nothing much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 11:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9322004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: Eliot looked at home in their kitchen in a way Clint wasn’t sure he’d ever quite manage, leaning back against the table with his ankles crossed, blue plaid shirt sleeves folded up to the elbow and forearms covered in flour. His mouth was turned up in the soft smile that it’d taken Clint a couple years of working together to see, that had come out a hell of a lot more often once Clint had introduced the guy to his kids.





	

Laura made a noise of glee and darted up the porch steps before Clint had even locked the car, moving faster than she had since Nathaniel’d been born.

“Eliot Spencer, are you making me pierniki?”

“Anything for you, duchess, you know that.” The slow drawling voice was clear through the open kitchen window; Clint stepped over the asters and columbine and hauled himself up on the water butt, placed there for easy escapes. (There were fourteen separate routes out of the house for him and Laura and the kids, and seven more where he was an acceptable loss.)

”You flirting with my wife again, Spencer?”

“Pretty girl like that, can you blame me?” Eliot looked at home in their kitchen in a way Clint wasn’t sure he’d ever quite manage, leaning back against the table with his ankles crossed, blue plaid shirt sleeves folded up to the elbow and forearms covered in flour. His mouth was turned up in the soft smile that it’d taken Clint a couple years of working together to see, that had come out a hell of a lot more often once Clint had introduced the guy to his kids.

“If Parker wouldn’t kill me for it I’d take up the offer in a hot second,” Laura said, practically pressed against the glass door of the oven. Clint stared at her, betrayed, and she tossed a grin his way. “Tell me you wouldn’t leave me for this man’s pizza crust.”

Clint opened his mouth. Laura held up a finger.

“And mean it,” she said.

He closed it again. She turned to Eliot smugly.

“They all in bed?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said. “Lila’s reading still, maybe, but the boys are snorin’.”

“You,” she told him solemnly, “are an angel.”

Clint scowled and hauled himself through the window, hopping down from the counter and putting his hands on Laura’s hips, glaring at Eliot over her shoulder.

“You,” he said, “need to quit making me look bad.”

“Aaw.” Laura leaned up to kiss his cheek fondly. “You know you do that all on your own, honey.” She pulled away and headed upstairs to check on the kids, and Clint hauled open the refrigerator, noting as he did so that a carefully drawn picture with lots of blue had joined the chaos of coupons and clippings and colors.

“Uncle Elephant?”

“We think that was what Nate was tryin’ to say,” Eliot said. He took the offered beer, opening it on the edge of the counter; Clint left one open on the table for Laura and jerked his head for Eliot to follow him out onto the porch.

Clint sat in the creaking porch swing and wasn’t surprised when Eliot hauled one of the wooden chairs around until he could sit with his back to the house, halfway between the front door and the porch steps. It was a fine night, a gentle breeze pulling at just the edges of the day’s heat. Clint rolled the cool glass of his beer between his palms and watched the specks of light as fireflies crawled over the huge damn woodpile, their yellow-green light comforting against the creeping dark.

“So Laura thinks they want me back?”

“What makes you say that?” Eliot asked, but there was a split-second’s pause as he lifted his beer.

“You never come visit so easy for me,” Clint said, and there was no trace of bitter to it. He knew how persuasive his wife could be. Eliot didn’t bother with the pretense for more than a moment.

“She think there’s good you can do,” he said, and Clint snorted.

“Last time out, I got a kid killed,” he said. “Time before that -” he shook his head. “World Security Council’s got Avengers coming out of their ears, and I’ve got too much red in my ledger for them.”

“Don’t.” Eliot’s voice was soft but decisive. “Don’t do that, that’s Nat’s thing, I sure as hell know that ain’t you.”

“’cos she’s got a conscience?” Clint said, maybe a little bitter this time around.

“’cos sometimes she’s too damned much like Parker and she thinks things can be fixed.”

Clint blinked out at the night-swallowed nothingness between the house and the barn. He knew that, obviously he knew that, that Tasha believed in the lies she chose to in order to make it from one end of the day to the other. But somehow - on the creaking porch swing that someday he’d fix so it didn’t hang crooked, in his best pair of trousers and the shoes he’d polished up special for a date with his wife - somehow he wanted to be the person who believed in that too.

“A debt’s something you get to wipe out,” Eliot said, soft in the silence between them. “That’s not how we work.”

“So what’s the point of saddling up and riding back out?” Clint asked, only half a question.

“You and me, it’s more like - like an old injury, like a scar, maybe,” Eliot said, and Clint huffed out something that was almost a laugh. They’d plenty enough of those, between the two of them. “You pretend like it’s gonna just disappear, some day it’ll seize up on you. Stop working. Screw you over right when you need it most.”

Eliot kicked up his boots onto the porch rail, picking at the label of his beer with callused fingers; Clint could see at least three more scars since they’d been out here last.

“You gotta use that shit, wear it, even if it’s somewhere next to no one’s ever gonna see,” Eliot said. “Gotta work with it, make sure the rest of you works around it. And even when it hurts - and it’s gonna,” he said, blue eyes lifting suddenly to meet Clint’s, pale and pained in the porch light’s warm glow, “you keep fightin’ anyway. ‘cos what else are folks like us any good for?”

Clint reached out to clink his bottle against Eliot’s. Took a slow sip.

“Love’s made a sap out of you, Spencer,” he said, and Eliot scowled.

“You shut your damned mouth, Hawkguy,” he said.


End file.
